Cats and Dogs

#TrumpRecession:  If yesterday’s 800 point stock market drop freaked you out, you are not alone.  Apparently Trump is pretty concerned too mostly because he’s worried that with little else to brag about, a declining market, slowing economy and fears of an impending recession could hurt his reelection prospects causing him to lose those voters willing to put up with a little white supremacism and a few racist utterances as long as the value of their 401Ks and/or IRAs are on the upswing.  To that end, the twitterer in chief can’t be all that happy that #TrumpRecession is now trending on his favorite medium.  Needing someone to blame for yesterday’s bloodbath he’s reupped his criticism of  Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, blaming the Fed for the slowing US economy and the recession predictive yield curve inversion that spurred stock markets in their downward direction.  Yield curves are outside of Trump’s wheel house but someone has probably explained to him that when short term interest rates are higher than long term rates it’s time to deflect and run for cover so he tweet called Powell out as “clueless” and tweet screeched about that “crazy inverted yield curve!”  Of course he finished his tweet with a claim that “we are winning, big time,” a reference to his trade war with China, a major cause of the recession fears and stock market decline.  As to China, yesterday Politico reported that Trump’s response to China’s harsh actions against Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrators has been so muted largely because of a promise he earlier made to China’s President Xi during a mid-June phone call. At that time Trump “surprised his aides” by telling Xi that he would not condemn the Chinese government over a crackdown in Hong Kong because “he understood it was an internal issue,” one in which the US would not interfere.  Almost immediately after Politico reported about that phone call, information that the news outlet likely received from a White House leaker trying to push Trump to assume a more assertive posture, Trump reversed his hands off position a bit by tweeting  “I know President Xi of China very well. He is a great leader who very much has the respect of his people. He is also a good man in a “tough business.” I have ZERO doubt that if President Xi wants to quickly and humanely solve the Hong Kong problem, he can do it. Personal meeting?”  He also implied that success in trade talks with China may now be linked to a peaceful resolution of the Hong Kong situation, a policy that is unlikely to go over well with Xi whose propaganda machine has been deflecting blame for the Hong Kong situation on US pro-Democracy policies, kind of ironic given that Trump has an affinity for autocratic governments and could hardly be described as being all in on Democracy.  

Epstein Saga:  Well, it looks like the reason that the coroner hasn’t definitely stated the cause of Jeffrey Epstein’s death is because it’s not clear what actually caused his death.  Last night the Washington Post reported that the coroner determined that Epstein “sustained multiple breaks in his neck bones” and that the hyoid bone was among the bones broken.  That’s significant because though “such breaks can occur in those who hang themselves, particularly if they are older, they are more common in victims of homicide by strangulation.”  Conspiracists everywhere just got a little more grist for their theories.  In other Epstein related news, Scott Borgerson, the CEO of Cargometrics, denied Daily Mail reports that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s one time girlfriend and alleged long term sexual predator cohort, was staying at his Manchester, Massachusetts home.  While admitting that they were friends and that they shared a passion for “ocean policy,” he also denied that they were dating, or at least that they were dating now.  He went on to say that claims that the dog he’d been seen walking belonged to Maxwell, instead insisting that the dog in question is his pooch “Secretary Hamilton,” named after that other Hamilton.  However, he then told one reporter that he was home alone with his cat.  Though Maxwell’s location remains a mystery, one thing’s for certain, she’s now being sued.  Yesterday, taking advantage of the new New York State child sex abuse law Epstein accuser Jennifer Araoz filed a lawsuit against Epstein’s estate, Maxwell and three unnamed female household staff members.     

Guns, Guns, Guns:  Despite all those guns in the hands of the kind of good people, i.e., police who are trained to deal with crazies and criminals with guns, it took eight hours  for police, six of whom were shot during the incident, to end a shoot-out with one of those gun toting criminals.  After the incident Philadelphia’s Mayor Jim Kenney called out for gun legislation saying "Our officers deserve to be protected and they don't deserve to be shot at by a guy for hours with an unlimited supply of weapons and an unlimited supply of bullets. It's disgusting and we got to do something about it ... quickly.” As to that gun legislation, although hope springs eternal and first daughter Ivanka has had her PR machine leak that she’s on the case, it’s hard to believe that anything substantive will actually come out of Washington  For his part, Trump has commissioned a poll to see how his base will react if he actually gets behind something substantive.  And Walmart, the site of the El Paso shooting spree, they’re still selling guns but have pulled items that promote violence from the company’s website inventory. Thoughts and prayers?

Yikes:  Iowa’s Republican Congressman Steve King who had already been kicked off of all House Committees for some of his more racist utterances defended his position that abortion should not be allowed even in cases of rape or incest by saying “What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that? Considering all the wars and all the rapes and pillages taken place and whatever happened to culture after society? I know I can't certify that I'm not a part of a product of that." #WTF